Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/138

 in my own small way, and she was happy. I am sure she was happy—then. She was very young and very ignorant, and the little suppers at some cheap restaurant in the woods, the simple ornaments and dresses I could alone afford her, the mere sense of the stir and glow and glitter and change that were all around, sufficed to amuse her and keep her contented—then.

Besides, she had also what is very dear to every female thing—she had admiration everywhere, from the errand boys who cried aloud her praises in street slang, to the titled soldiers who doffed their caps to her from the café-court below, and would, no doubt, have heaped upon her flowers and bonbons, and jewels and rare gifts, had I not stood betwixt her and their smiles.

They jeered at me and jested about me many a time I knew, but I turned a deaf ear: for her sake I would not be embroiled; and though very surely they despised me—-me, the poor, ugly comedian who owned a thing so fair—yet they did not openly provoke me.

The grief I had—and it was one I could not change—was that I was compelled to leave her so often in solitude.

With rehearsal and performance the theatre usurped almost all the hours. But I made her 9*